 I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that when you learn to drive you learned how to use both pedals the gas pedal and the brake pedal and Potentially if you were really lucky and learned how to drive on a on a manual Then you may have even had a third pedal to deal with the clutch pedal there But I'm gonna assume you learned how to use all of those because they all perform a particular and important function right and if not Your drives may look a lot like this right where you're scared the other person's scared because you don't really know what You're doing because you only know half the story The same thing is true in communication if we exclude listening from the equation We spend a lot of time on focusing on reading and writing and speaking and and our verbal communication not verbal communication But we spend very little time being taught how to listen well and and learning how to do that well So to start in this series, I'd just like to go through what are some of the basics of listening? Which is a critically important skills we'll find out, but we don't know enough about it And we don't focus on it enough and we don't do it. Well, so let's focus on some of the listening basics now And then in other videos we'll get into some more the more detailed information about listening But let's start with the beginning and the beginning is what is listening? So how do we define listening listening is the active process through which we make meaning out of assess and Respond to what we hear so you can see there's a lot going on there It's more than just the hearing process, which is part of it as we'll see but Listening is an active process. It's something we have to be actively engaged and we have to flip that switch and choose to do it In order to do it effectively. It's also a part of the listening is making meaning out of some what someone else is saying So we're we're not only seeking to understand but also interpret that information Then we're also assessing it possibly evaluating and judging what that person is saying analyzing it a bit and Then we're responding listening as we'll find out is not a one-way street It's a two-way process it involves both incoming Stimuli and also a response that we provide whether that's verbal or non-verbal and again We'll get in all that type stuff and focus specifically on responses in a later video But for now what we need to know is that listening is an active process Through which we make meaning out of assess and respond to what we hear So now that we know what listening is why does it matter? Why is it important? Doesn't it just happen naturally? Well, it doesn't just happen naturally and it is quite important as we know from research listening is the most utilized Component of communication. So when we look at reading writing speaking and listening as the components of communication We know that we do more listening than we do anything else all those other three combined Don't add up to the time that we spend listening as communicators So it's the thing we do most as communicators and as such it behooves us to do it well because we spend so much time doing The thing we know is that it's a critical skill in both a professional and personal context So in your personal life, I mean, how often have you heard in your personal life? You're not listening to me or you don't listen while you're not, you know listening effectively It can benefit us just so much in our personal relationships It's also though a critical skill in a professional context just a quick Google search, which you can do yourself Google top communication skills in the workplace. That's what I did in this just a screen grab of what I found Both the top listings the number one thing on each of these lists is listening Active listening or listening is a critical skill in the workplace Employers want people who are able to listen to their instructions their supervisors instructions But also listen to their coworkers listen to their clients listen to the people who work beneath them And are and are their subordinates and and just be able to listen effectively, right? And so if this is such an important skill as it is as we as we're seeing here If it's so important, then why don't we know how to do it better? Well, you know part of the reason is when we look at these skills, you know The one that we learn first is listening we can listen before we can speak read or write or do any of that other stuff So we we learn how to do it first. We learn how to listen first I mean think about your children infants even you know toddlers They know the meaning of the word no, I mean they hear it all the time, right? And they know what it means. They don't always act like they know what it means But they know what it means we learn how to listen And and we know how to do that before we know how to communicate in any other way What's also the most used is we just discovered we use listening We are engaged in listening more than reading writing and speaking combined And yet when we think about how much instruction you've received over the years in listening specifically focused on how to listen Effectively and then we find it's the least thought We learn how to do these other things way more think about the amount of time you spent in school learning how to write well Learning how to read properly and effectively even learning how to speak you probably had a public speaking class or even just some Instruction on you know when you were given book reports You got feedback and how to speak well and things like that But how much time I'm willing to bet that that few if any of you listening to this video watching this video have Had specific instruction on listening even in the form of a short video or series like this or you don't like this You probably haven't had any so is it any wonder that we don't do it better that we're really ineffective in our listening skills It's a skill and as any skill it takes practice and it takes takes first some instruction on how to do it Then it takes practice on learning how to do it well and really refining that skill We don't get any of that we aren't taught anything so we develop these poor skills that we then you know Just repeat over and over again in a in a bad way. We pick up these bad habits So we're it's not surprising that we don't listen very well when we don't receive any instruction at it In order to break down the listening process We're going to look at things through the lens of what we call the hurryer model of listening right of the listening process And there are other models that describe the listening process This is just the one that I that I like and that I use to explain the listening And we'll have a whole other video on the hurryer model on the details of it But you can see it here that the hurryer the letters just stand for each of these words there. It's an acronym So you see we start with hearing then we have Involved some understanding interpreting and evaluating in different and different ways and at different levels depending on the context and depending on what We're doing listening then also though involves Some degree of remembering whether that's really short-term memory or long-term memory or somewhere in between there There the memory is a part of the listening process and remembering information and then finally as we said listening is not a one-way street It's a two-way process that involves responding whether that's verbal responses not verbal responses It's you know in some way indicating that we are hearing what they're saying that we are we are actively listening and that Understanding to a certain extent you know more or less depending on what again the context and responses will take on different forms You will have a whole separate video on just responding that you can check out because responding is such an important part of this process But you can see there's more to the listening process than just what we might think of as hearing right hearing is a An important initial part of that process. It's hard to listen if you can't hear But it involves so much more than just hearing it extends into these other areas of Understanding interpreting evaluating remembering and responding and then of course we have in this undercurrent You know kind of resting under and over and around all of this of what we call a frame of reference Everything that we experience everything that we process goes through You know what I think of is this filter between our senses and our brain All our frame of reference and that frame of reference is built of and made up of all these things You see here your beliefs your attitudes your values your culture your experiences your interests your biases all of these get stuck into a Blender and and and out comes your frame of reference and that's going to be totally unique for every person So we're all hearing things and trying to understand things and so forth But we're doing it differently because it's being processed through an absolutely unique frame of reference which may be More or or less similar to somebody else's frame of reference may have us hearing and listening and coming out with two Totally different interpretations of something right so anyway frame of reference really kind of underlies and lies under and Around and over everything in communication including the listening process So again, we'll have a whole different video on on the listening product the hurryer model You can check that out. There's a whole different video on responding. You can check that out as well And then we have a separate video as well on just some of the challenges of listening some of the things that make listening difficult Right and those will all be linked below. You can check those out linked in the in the comment here in that information section below The last thing I want to just chat about briefly is just that there are different types of listening We engage in listening in different ways and different types of listening And we think of it kind of like a tree because we we start, you know With the sampling and the roots of one kind of listening and then we grow into these others Really and and it becomes the leaves and the branches of the listening tree so to speak But it starts with discriminative listening Discriminative listening just means essentially. What are you listening to we have? Tremendous problem these days with information overload and with just, you know, our brain is taking us different places and things So listening is hard as we said, it's an active process. So we have to really decide What am I going to listen to that's discriminative listening? Am I listening to this thing over here or am I listening to this thing on the other side of the world? I listen to the TV or am I listening to my my friend or family member who's trying to talk to me I'm making a choice about what I'm going to Where I'm going to give my attention to to what stimuli I'm going to give my attention That's discriminative listening first just making that decision of This is what I'm going to listen to this is what I'm paying attention to that's discriminative listening And that's where we all start with our listening skills The next kind of level that we would look at is informational listening and as the name would suggest It's just listening for information. We're not really trying to evaluate or assess information at this level Think of it as you know, you're in class and although you should have a little bit You know, you should be critiquing your instructors a little bit be critical of that information But for the most part you're there because they're giving you information. So we're just trying to take it in Or when we're getting instructions on something at work how the process works at work or how to get to somebody's house You know, especially before we had Google Maps and things like that We used to have to have people give us directions and write them down and listen. Well, right? That's just listening for information I'm just listening to take it in remember it and and try and process it in in the most basic sense of receiving that information The next level would be what we call critical listening This is where we do begin to assess and evaluate that information first at its core for Is this information does this information ring true to me or is it does it not seem as as accurate to me or does it not seem You know, it's like it's like it's true. So if we decide it's true and we're listening or false or whatever Then we get into things like I'm analyzing this for what's the quality of this information How does this relate to me? I'm evaluating. I'm judging. I'm analyzing this information with those critical listening skills And and this is something we should do more than we probably do We should be doing this when we're watching TV when we're watching the news more listening to politicians You know listening to somebody's story, we should be listening critically to see if this lines up with what we See as reality and how accurate this information and have credibles this person and so forth So we engage in critical listening Then at the top of the tree the leafy parts the the really what I think is the most challenging type of listening is empathic listening Well, we're exhibiting empathy We're listening to somebody with the goal of putting ourselves into their shoes seeing things from their perspective It really requires not only effective listening skills, but a high degree of emotional intelligence as well to do this effectively So it is I think the most challenging type of listening But it's really important especially in our interpersonal relationships that we develop some empathic skills for when our friend comes over And has something they want to get off their chest They're having a rough day or they're having issues with their significant other or they broke up with somebody we can We can be empathic or with the opposite side when they're having a great day We can listen how wonderful their day is and support them in that way and and so we can engage in empathic listening And so these are really important relational listening skills empathic listening is so We want to develop those skills as well Can these exist that they come along as we as we learn we first have to learn how to be discriminative in our listening and be able to focus our attention on on Something as a listener then we can work on listening for information listening for critical aspects and then Developing those empathic skills as well So hopefully now you have a better understanding of what listening is we've defined it for you and and just talked about some of the basic Aspects of listening again We'll get into further detail in this in other videos We have available for you that you'll find links for that in the information below But just wanted to lay a foundation for what is listening It's probably more than we thought it was before and and what are some of the important aspects? How does it work those types of things? If you have questions about the listening process or anything related to listening at all Please feel free to email me. I'd love to hear from you there in the meantime I hope that you will have a renewed understanding of listening and appreciation for what goes into listening and and will begin to Have the foundational understanding so that you can improve your own skills as a listener